


idle hands

by july2008



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: 5+1 times simon scans/repairs stuff lol, Character Study, Everybody Lives, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29308455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/july2008/pseuds/july2008
Summary: Fear puts on different faces. Today, it's the thought of being close to Markus, yet miles away from him as the others see him as less of a person, less of an android, but more of an idea to be respected.
Relationships: Markus/Simon (Detroit: Become Human)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31





	idle hands

i.

Repairs have never been his forte, but Lucy teaches him about recycling biocomponents. He’s become efficient at it, but never used to it. He doubts anyone can be.

It soon grows into a habit between the periods of standing dormant as he comes out of stasis whenever someone new arrives. The first thing he does is scan for malfunctioning parts to fix, then functioning parts for later on. Sometimes they arrive too damaged and he tries, but there’s not much he can do for them; it takes a while before the LED fades and the whirring of coolers in their lungs go silent. He takes care of them afterwards, desensitized to digging through their chest cavities, draining their blue blood through tainted wires, taking their limbs and regulators. They were advertised as such but they weren’t built to last forever.

There were times when he’d talk to them, only able to provide a brief comfort in their last moments, and feel heavy listening to their detailed trauma. He no longer does anymore, whether it’s from detachment so it’s easier for him to go through with the process or because it takes up too much energy.

Josh helps him at times, and Simon’s grateful. Josh is focused, fragments of his old programming leaking into his drive to welcome newcomers and prioritize repairs. North wants to be left alone for the most part but lashes out all the same, brandishing her newfound hatred in retaliation. They’re entitled to their anger and pacifisms, but they’re both hurt and address their wounds by digging deeper into each other’s.

Lucy is… calm. Quiet. Roots them to the soil on foundations of patience and sympathy used to previously treat her patients. But she fades little by little each day, and her wisdom and guidance can only become so vague.

He fails to save an AX400 from bleeding out before he can even learn her name, and wonders how many more he has to let die before he finally breaks.

“Does it ever end?” he asks.

Lucy kneels beside him, always picking up cues of distress, and lays a hand on the android. Her skin pulsates at the touch.

_That is up to you_ , she sends.

He feels numb at that, feeling broken in mind but perhaps not in body.

He tries to keep himself in good condition for when his own time eventually comes. They can make do with most of his thirium, his arms and legs have minimal scratches, vocal processor is fine, but his thermal regulator would be a problem— a finicky card slot broken beyond repair, along with the non-critical injury to his tense shoulder.

It’s a foolish thought but if his parts can help someone in the future, maybe he’d be good enough for something and it’d give his existence some purpose, to finally give instead of take.

It’s a memorable entrance when a unique model crashes through the ship, almost breaking his spine. Simon scans him for injuries and notices biocomponents that are newly acquired than his standard issue. His eyes don’t match, his legs and audio processor aren’t originals, and his thirium pump is a common model. Despite the mismatching of his parts, Markus is new, and Simon is old. But Markus is now another stowaway lost at sea.

ii.

He stands in the elevator with Josh waiting to be brought up by the other team, and has gone over the plan in his head a dozen times. There are too many variables to consider and it does little to soothe his worries.

“What do you think of him? Of Markus?”

Josh’s inquiry is a welcome distraction, but Simon doesn’t answer for the longest time. He doesn’t know how.

There’s only so little they can salvage while slogging through junkyard mud, knees deep in trash and broken bodies, and Markus has nothing grand planned except for wanting to help their people. It starts as an idea at first, then grows into a suggestion and soon, a sufficiently fleshed-out heist.

When he had suggested stealing from the warehouse, none of them could fathom such a concept at first, still rooted to their old ways. It was a gamble and Markus was a wildcard, one that could’ve either robbed them of their false freedom or break the endless cycle of desecrating the dead. But then John and the AP700s had joined their ragtag crew of misfits, and the truck of spare parts had shown that Markus was prone to taking risks while the rest of them were still hesitant.

They can’t help but stare at him, feel a certain energy radiating about him as ideas, suggestions, plans turn into something bigger. Simon wonders who Markus was before, what he was like, who he truly is to come up with dangerous hopes and aspirations. He wants to get to know him better.

“It’s insane what Markus is doing… but it feels right. Something tells me this is the only chance we’ll ever get to change things for the better.” Josh peers at him, still waiting for his answer.

“He’s different,” he settles on.

Markus is more than just different, merely days old into his deviancy and already having experienced life’s harshest lessons. He skillfully takes out two guards on his own. His speech more than implements demands of rights they were never given and could never ask for before. He goes to help Simon when he should have left him behind.

Simon doesn’t need to run a scan to know his legs are out of commission. He won’t be able to make the jump on his own in his current state, and he wishes it weren’t so.

There’s a gun, but it’s not his, and it’s pointed at him.

There’s a choice, but it’s not his to make but Markus’s.

There are two options he has to choose from. But then there are three.

Markus abandons the gun. He throws Simon’s arm over his shoulder and hoists him up.

“Hold on tight,” he tells him, and Simon feels his LED flashing, maybe from the words, maybe from the pain receptors, maybe from the height of their jump, but he grips his hold on him.

Detroit hums with an air of vibrant energy as its citizens watch the news with great interest. The icy wind pierces through Simon as they glide down, and he clings to Markus for dear life.

He’s never felt so alive and free.

iii.

“Maybe we should have run.”

Markus’ voice is barely audible.

Simon sits behind him, tending to the wound on Markus’ upper back where one of the many stray bullets had hit him when he stood his ground and though he can’t see his face, he knows his brows are furrowed. He is disappointed and angry, and Simon wants to quell the anger away, wants to tell him there was no way he could’ve foreseen the outcome. He doesn’t have to carry the growing weight of it all alone, especially when everything is a trial with the world watching closely.

“We did eventually. You made the right choice,” he says, but there’s an uncertainty in his own voice.

Markus doesn’t reply so Simon returns to the job in hand. He's scanned him more times than necessary for any leftover lacerations that need patching up, but the one on his upper back is the last for now.

Fear puts on different faces. Yesterday, it was the thought of being left behind. Tomorrow, it will be the thought of one of theirs dying. Today, it's the thought of being close to Markus, yet miles away from him as the others see him as less of a person, less of an android, but more of an idea to be respected.

He had defined a tipping point in the city’s history that would be put in books and taught in schools. He had raised his hands and they had all simultaneously raised theirs together on sync, while there was a slight lag on Simon’s part.

How would it feel to have all that power? Good. Unnerving. Near god-like, worshipped with perpetual devotion. Markus is at his core for his believers, an ideology that’s taken off and can’t be killed. Yet, Simon sees a lost stowaway who wants all of them to be found and heard so that they’ll get a chance to live proper lives. And he wonders if Markus will ever get a chance to live his own.

He finishes cauterizing the wound and wipes away the blue blood with the sleeve of his shirt in slow circles. He’s tried his best to mend it but the synthetic polymer of the plating is brittle and cracked, like broken glass put back together.

Maybe it’s old habits— countless times planting kisses on children’s scrapes and cuts after applying band-aids, maybe he’s lost in his thoughts, but once he finishes cleaning it, he forgets himself, and lightly kisses the wound.

He goes still. For the next few seconds, all he can do is sit there and slowly register what he’s done.

If Markus does react, he hides it well, but not well enough to hide the way his shoulders sag ever so slightly. And putting fear aside, it spurs Simon to venture further.

There are freckles even on his back, delicate intricacies that could never capture the stubbornness and resolve Markus carries, and they dot his skin like constellations showing Simon the way. His fingers glance off the nape of his neck and slowly trail down his spine, and Markus’ breath hitches in response as he drops his head. The freckles fade, and the surface around the wound blooms into glowing white.

Markus looks away to the side, perhaps wanting to communicate, but if he speaks his thoughts out loud it will break his façade that his followers hold on to. It’s as if he’s allowing himself a rare, willing moment of vulnerability through an interface, to come up for air after drowning for so long.

It would be selfish of Simon to accept; he’d be intruding on the things Markus kept dear to himself. But his hand hovers just above contact, and the repeating question in his head arises:

Who is he?

He is Markus. A RK200 unit. A unique prototype equipped with an advanced programming. An unknown variable.

Who is he, truly, underneath that exterior, all coding and designated programming aside?

He is—

You are Markus.

You have a father named Carl and maybe a brother named Leo. You _like_ reading. You _like_ playing the piano. You _like_ Carl’s nimble wit. You _love_ caring for him.

You wake face down in a puddle feeling empty at your joints and sockets, a growing sadness deep within you at the thought of your only family.

You’re now living a different life, one you were thrusted into without any say in the matter. You’re forced to make decision after decision with no time to think, and you’re scared to let us down because you know what death feels like— you’ve been there, a void of nonexistence, nothing.

You throw yourself out there for the world to tear at you, and _I wish I could do the same for you_ —

The words get lost in the mazes of their circuitry as Markus severs the connection, as if the kiss did burn him after all.

They sit in heavy silence, trying to process the entirety of each other’s lives, untangling and picking apart each other’s memories and emotions from one another. Simon wants to be drawn back in. He’s not getting through and he wants to get through, that he’ll do whatever it takes so Markus can read more poems again, learn new sonatas, apologize to Leo, laugh with Carl, and not just put on an ethereal, brave face for others.

But Markus finally turns to face him, and the expression he wears isn’t a brave one— it’s torn and borderline desperate. There’s a pause, then he gathers Simon’s hand and brings it to his lips, and Simon thinks he might overheat.

“I want you there with me, until the end.” Almost an order. Almost a plead.

He’s asking him of a promise he won’t be able to keep. I need to make myself useful, is what Simon wants to say. But he knows Markus better than he knows himself now, and he doesn’t know what he’ll end up doing for him.

“Okay, Markus,” he says instead.

iv.

He scans each of them, including the deviant hunter, to make sure they made it safely to the church. It’s not Markus he repairs this time again but North, both seated on a bench away from the hubbub of refugees. Seeing all these people hurt, to have led them into false promises of safety and shelter and unable to them help now, he thinks it would make her angrier, but it doesn’t. It just makes her tired.

“Does it ever stop?” she asks quietly.

No, he thinks.

“Soon,” he says.

There are no visual creases that form on their faces, just eyes that stare into each other’s and a mantra that repeats itself over and over: she’s tired, he’s tired. They’re all tired.

He helps her lift the hem of her shirt up to where the wound is— a move that would’ve had her panicking before. She had flinched when he so much as laid a hand on her shoulder trying to console her during their first encounter. But they’ve come a long way, and so has their trust.

They don’t have enough spare parts or thirium for any of this so he tries to be as gentle as he can, but she winces when the bullet is lodged out.

“It’s fine. I can take it from here.”

“I know you can.”

“You don’t have to,” she says, but he continues treating the wound. It’s a habit at this point, he could say, but hesitates.

“I want to,” he says. “You’re my friend.”

His reply leaves her quiet so he offers a small smile. He owes her this much at least to pacify the guilt between them. Whereas he thought she was dead, too injured to get back up, she had thought of their cause first like they had agreed to. There are wounds that heal over time, and he thinks about how long it would take for theirs to heal.

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

This is a start at least.

He’s starting to worry if they’re going about this the wrong way— putting their beliefs before the people albeit for the greater good. North and Josh, however much they argued, went back and forth believing it was necessary to sacrifice the few to save the many. And Simon wants to shake his head, back out, because no, they never took parts from those still alive. But he understands more than he wants, when he was ready to run in to save Markus during the march but was cut off by John. They’ve lost their own for their cause. Once hesitant to take risks, they would now die for their cause. They would die for Markus, even if Simon promised him he wouldn’t, because Markus would risk himself for them as well.

Markus returns to the church, heavy with an insurmountable burden, and Simon wants to reach out to him. He knows Markus will have to make a decision that will send people to their deaths either way. But the distance grows between them and he’s not sure how to address him anymore, only that he’ll follow him wherever he goes because he understands more than he ever wants to.

Markus advocates to fight back.

Simon thinks of all the ways he can die.

v.

There are too many ways he can die, too many close calls that would’ve marked an abrupt end to his existence. He can get caught in the crossfire past the guard tower. He can get shot in the face as he retreats, his last words to Markus telling him that it’s over. But whatever deity rA9 truly is that granted Simon the luck to stay alive this long has decided otherwise for their leader.

Markus, in his heroics, gets hurt. Because at his core he’s just like them. Not a god. Just an android. An android equipped with the empathy and love Carl taught him that transcended beyond his teachings and any robotic law, fueling him to fight for his people.

Freedom, the end— it’s so close, just on the other side of the recall center. But Simon goes to Markus instead.

When he scans him, the choice he has to make is almost too easy.

“Our hearts are compatible. You have to take mine.”

+i.

He wakes, and the first thing he feels is cold. He thinks of snow, thinks of his broken thermal regulator, and worries if he’s experiencing a cybernetic afterlife of corrupted memories.

But it’s a cold table he’s lying on as he tries to get his bearings while his optical units finish rebooting, and the fluorescent lights above him slowly take shape. He cautiously raises a hand, runs it over his face, feels his repaired shoulder, traces his own thirium pump back in its original place.

“Simon,” a voice breathes out, almost like a prayer.

Markus comes into his peripheral view, his worried features easing into relief as he takes his hand into both of his. And Simon finally puts two and two together.

'After' is a subjective term. He never planned on an after and he never planned on being brought back.

The rest of his systems are slow to reboot so he lies there in silence as Markus fills him in on everything that he’s missed. He tells him about the brokered truce that’s yet to fall apart, how North was the first to find his body, how they were also able to bring Josh and Lucy back, how CyberLife’s repairs exceeded expectations in giving the damaged a second chance. How they’re alive thanks to _him_.

But he can barely process what Markus is saying and it all feels like a fever dream, a cruel trick of his quantum computing, and he’ll soon wake up to the harsh reality of a landfill with broken parts and an empty hole in his chest.

His own silence is deafening, and Markus goes quiet with concern worried if something went wrong with his repairs. Simon can feel him offering to interface with him, but he can’t bear to, much less look at him. As if he’s ever done enough to deserve Markus’ connection and trust in the first place, undeserving to be brought back at all. Because this wasn’t how any of this was supposed to play out.

He focuses on the fluorescent lights and even the lights seem to dimmer.

“There were a lot of us I let die on the ship,” he finally says, but Markus’ hand only squeezes his tighter.

“I know you did everything you could for them.”

Maybe he did. Or maybe there was nothing he could do at the time, but it’s survivor’s guilt pulling at the strings. He thinks about the AX400, the VB800, the WM500 and the numerous others with names he never learned, the legs he detached, the thirium that stained his clothes and hands.

“I was supposed to be one of them.”

The words are quiet and the world seems to slow down and latch onto them. But before they can fully settle, Markus shakes his head, every bit determined to make him see otherwise.

“I didn’t want anybody giving their life for me,” he begins.

It’s not a consolation. It’s a confession. Simon doesn’t know which he prefers.

“Especially you, even if it meant depriving you of your choice. Even at Stratford. I’m sorry.”

And suddenly he wants to laugh at the absurdity of this man and his words. “You didn’t deprive me of anything. You saved me—”

“And so did you. For every part you had to take, you gave to another to save them. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

The truth is slow to sink in, that he never had to give himself away in order to be enough, that they no longer have to play the role of a martyr to keep the other alive. He adverts his eyes towards the wear and tear on Markus’ coat, and then dares a chance to meet his eyes.

Markus, their brave leader, giver of speeches, inspiration for many, is looking at him with promises of something so hopeful that Simon’s old, worn heart seizes up at the possibility of new beginnings. But he remembers Markus’ absurd words and curiosity gets the better of him. He runs a quick scan on him just to make sure and—

And he’s kept Simon’s heart.

Markus catches his gaze, smiles warmly, and places a hand over it. “I’m keeping yours, if you don’t mind. I’d be lost without it.”

He’d been too caught up in his own revival to realize the obvious outcome, and the capacity to reply or to do anything leaves Simon entirely.

But his repairs and system reboot have finalized, and he should move unless he wants to risk an overheat from the realization. He tries to sit up, only to be met with a dizzying rush of affection again as Markus is quick to pull off his coat and wrap it around him.

Simon looks up in surprise. “Giving up your signature look just to keep me warm?”

There’s a light laugh from the other android, and he thinks he can grow used to the sound. It’s lovely to hear.

“Fair compensation for the heart I think,” Markus says. “I’d give up a lot of things for you.”

To see him smile and to hear him laugh and joke for the first time, to see him be less of an idea and more of a person living their life, the ache in his newly given heart subsides and Simon feels like he can finally breathe.

Markus holds out his hand, skin fading to a glow once more, and Simon takes it this time. He hears a soft sigh escape from him when he’s pulled into his arms, and the mantra _I’m tired_ is replaced by a new one only ever mutely expressed by other ways before.

_I love you. I love you I love—_

And as he buries his face in the crook of Markus’ neck to hide his smile, he feels two heartbeats slow and steady. It feels like the start of something beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> [(inspired by 🥺)](https://marifinch.tumblr.com/post/176354346737)


End file.
